Yemrehane Christos

The next day we took a one and half hour drive to visit what is arguably the most amazing of the churches in the area. Yemrehane Christos is a cave church, built in the 10th century by King Yemrehane Christos. The church compound is built in the mouth of a large cave, on top of water. They first built a platform as a base for the cave and today you cannot tell that there is water underneath, except for places where there are holes in the floor. The church itself is built of black basalt chips covered with wood and rock, with a layer of marble near the top.

This church is particularly famous for its vivid wall paintings. It was hard to see in the dark church, but they showed up nicely with a flash :-)

We had hoped to make it to the church in time to see some of their service, but alas, we were too late. Each church holds special services one day a week and this was Yemrehane's day. There were still some people milling about.

Most graves in Ethiopia are above ground and Orthodox graves always face east. Ethiopians aren't squeemish about the dead, since death is actually something they see. At a church in town we saw bones, skin included, of former pilgrims just laying in the wall.

At Yemrehane we also saw human bones scattered in the back, including one of a small child. We had to watch where we stepped because there were skulls sticking up through the dirt on the floor. It was quite surreal to be in a church where people have worshipped, lived, and died since the 10th century. People continue to live and die here and it was a sober reminder of the fate of us all. Below are the graves of King Yemrehane and his wife. They were simply covered with cloth and we could have, if we had wanted to, just walked right up to them.

These two people were sorting gain in the churchyard. They were very, very grateful for the small amount of money we gave them for this picture.

This boy is studying to be a deacon in the church. We spent the walk down the mountain with him and his friends, but more on them in the next post.